Ho Ho hopeless

1. Both kids are home with terrible colds today. Henry stayed home yesterday (he and I spent most of the day running errands together during a snow storm), and I decided to give him one more day to recover. Then Lucy woke up stuffy and whiny. Her condition remains unchanged.

2. The online photo place that delivers to Wegmans lost my Christmas pictures. I placed the order on Monday night, and when they still hadn't arrived yesterday I called the store. Someone in Wegman's photo department directed me to the photolab's "Customer Success" department (I'm not kidding, that's really what they called it) where I was informed that my pictures should have arrived in the store at 10 a.m. this morning. But they didn't. And all they could do was offer me 15 free prints and let me place the order again. I declined.

I placed the order through Snapfish and am picking up the prints from Walgreens later today. I didn't do this in the first place because last time I got prints from Snapfish and Wegmans simultaneously the Snapfish ones were hideous.

So, if I you get a hideous picture of my kids (and me and Cary, if you happen to be named LHM) don't blame me!

That is all.

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Now playing: The Affair - Red And White

Somehow this cheered me, particularly the comments section

This quote is directly from IvyGate (I'm too exhausted to come up with my own post tonight):

"Last night, between 10pm and 3am, the freshmen of the Ezra Stiles college at Yale constructed a massive christmas light penis on the front of Lawrance as a response to the traditional christmas light "JE SUX" written across the front of Farnum, the adjacent dorm. The penis was estimated to be about 100 feet long, and even sported multi-colored, blinking ejaculate. The penis will ostensibly remain on Lawrance through the end of finals (next week)."

I guess I'm glad to have a picture of my former home (I think I can see the light from the room where I lived as a Freshman Counselor about mid-way up the shaft), and glad to know that ES still lives in Lawrence.

I wonder if I will ever post anything about college not lifted directly from IvyGate ... probably not. Which means I am currently leaning against going to my upcoming reunion. If you are still reading this then I would rather just visit you instead.

Emergency Ramones Requisition

Henry declared his new favorite song was "number 19" on an old CMJ sampler that Cary had. It turns out to be a little tune called "Marijuana Motherfucker" by D.O.A.

I never thought I would feel the need to censor my son's musical tastes, but at six years old he has already gotten the best of me. We promptly burned him a Ramones CD (so much better than D.O.A. but with the same high energy that he liked), and made the CMJ sampler disappear. At least now when his teacher asks him his favorite song, he can give an answer that won't fill me with complete dread.

In the interest of full disclosure "Now I wanna sniff some glue" and "Beat on the brat" are not on Henry's copy. Not yet.

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Now playing: The Ramones - now I wanna sniff some glue

When am I gonna get that vacation?

One really good thing did happen yesterday: Lucy wrote her name for the first time.

Otherwise the day was endless.

1. I took Lucy to a playgroup at an overpriced gymnastics play space which she loves, only to find out that I had been told the wrong time and we were two hours late. She cried.

2. I received not one, but two, calls from the school yesterday regarding Henry's behavior. Apparently at one point during a study of Hanukkah he wrote "Merry Christmas" on the back of his paper, got up out of his seat, and tried to walk around the room to show the other students. He refused to go back to his seat on the grounds that he "just wanted to spread holiday cheer."

3. Finally, as I was ready to put Lucy to sleep last night we discovered that Sufi had vomited up two hair balls on her comforter.

Maybe we are turning things around. This morning Henry woke, showered, and dressed himself. Attempted to write out a Googol on a piece of paper while I dressed Lucy. I think there are 100 zeroes. He filled both sides of a piece of paper, so he may be close. He ate breakfast without argument. And got on his coat and shoes on his own without prompting. I rewarded his good behavior by allowing him to take a chunk of a huge icicle from our roof to the bus stop because that is what he begged me for.

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Now playing: Xiu Xiu - Clowne Towne

Das Boot

Henry has homework everyday day, which I will never accept, because he is only in 1st grade. Some days it takes him 15 minutes, but some days we spend over an hour on the work depending on what got sent home.

On Tuesday he brought home a sheet of paper with a photocopied shoe. All of the directions were in German. After some guessing it was clear he was supposed to color the shoe, cut it out, fold it here and there, and voila, a 3-D shoe. WTF! If it is so important that it is worth sending home, then isn't it important enough to give us some directions?

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Now playing: Feist - When I Was A Young Girl (VV Mix)